In my other incarnation as Sadie of Sadie’s Spotlight, I received a free copy of Kel Carpenter and Aurelia Jane‘s Reject Me.

“Markus Del Reyes, I reject you.”
He left me no choice.

I refuse to spend the rest of my life with my childhood bully for a mate. I may be a cursed shifter, incapable of shifting—but I wasn’t desperate.

Not till the Alpha Supreme cast me out of the House of Fire and Fluorite for rejecting his son.

Now I’m packless.
Homeless.
No longer under the protection of my House.

Until the dark vampire king of Blood and Beryl turns his sights on me.

In return for protection from my former House, I have to join his.
But nothing ever comes for free.

He wants something from me, and it’s not my allegiance.

It’s the only way I can survive, but at what cost?

I’ve lost everything for doing what I know is right, but the greatest danger I ever faced was never losing my life … it was opening my cursed heart.

I don’t usually use star ratings on the blog. But sometimes they are helpful in making a point. If I were going to rate it, I would say that this barely made three stars for me. Let me emphasize the for me part because although I have objective complaints, they mostly didn’t work for me for subjective reasons. What I mean is that the complaints I have may not be deal breakers for other people because they aren’t uncommon.

Objectively, the book is way, way, way too long. The plot here did not need anywhere near 532 pages to tell!

Objectively, this book doesn’t know if it wants to be YA or NA. New adult books can be hard to predict going in. Get one on the older end, and it can feel mostly adult; get one on the younger end, and it basically feels like young adult fiction. The MFC here is 24 (the MMC is 300+), but the writing and plotting feel very YA. This would be fine, except the book also has explicit sex in it. And the combination of a YA plot and prose paired with explicit sex is jarring and feels inconsistent.

Objectively, the plot is really predictable and formulaic. This book feels like nothing more than recycled material. We have all seen every single aspect of this story before—the character types, the plot, the third-act miscommunication drama, the betrayer, and the villain all recycled. Here’s the thing about recycled material though (which brings me back to my first point), we read such books because a lot of us like them. This one just didn’t manage to do it for me.

The writing is perfectly readable. The cover is gorgeous, and the world this sets up for the rest of the series looks interesting.

Other Reviews:

https://www.romnceschmomnce.com/book-review-reject-me-rejected-mates-anyone/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=book-review-reject-me-rejected-mates-anyone